Sunday, December 28, 2014

This mall is used to be my favorite place for hang-out, either alone or with friends. Alone, I could browse the stores there for hours....without buying anything....hehehe...

It's a nice place, where you could find things in wide-range prices. From cheap ones till the branded ones. And there are many places where you can just buy coffee and snacks and talks for hours with friends.

For some time now....hmmmm, almost a year, I think.....I didn't have any desire to go there. With friends nor being alone.....

Reason 1, it has become too far away for me. Especially as now I work at home, and Plaza Tunjungan is in different district. I live in the West part of my city, and Plaza Tunjungan is at the city central. To go there means I have to go through one big, crowded main road....yikes!!!Reason 2, as Plaza Tunjungan is also quite famous among my city fellows, find a nice parking place is quite tricky. If I choose to ride my motorcycle (it's quicker and more efficient), I have to park outside, in 5 minutes walking distance to the nearest entrance plus another 3 minutes walking to the mall back-entrance. If I drive my car, then I have to calculate correctly when I should arrive to be able to find a nice parking space. Otherwise, I have drive round and round, up and down the parking building....makes my foot ache and my head dizzy....hahaha...Reason 3....maybe the biggest one....because once I spent many hours browsing this mall with one of my favorite friends. Those hours were very impressive that I can't walk around the mall without remembering and feeling lost, now we may not meet again.... But I knew that one day I will be able to visit Plaza Tunjungan again...I have to, because after all it's one famous mall in my city....hehehe...So, here were I....the second day of my Christmas vacation, Dec 26, 2014. My sister wanted to meet someone and then go to cinema watching EXODUS: GODS & KINGS with my other sister, my nephews and me. And she preferred Plaza Tunjungan.....oh, alright, no problem for me....hehehe...And it was really no problem, since we didn't do much browsing...hahaha...we just sat at the food court, talking while waiting for the movie begin...hehehe... I'm survived!!! And Plaza Tunjungan is still a marvelous place after all...:)

Friday, December 26, 2014

It's been a while since my last post. My time has been fully occupied by the laundry work. I usually start at 6am and stop all the work at 9pm. I use the time remaining for doing the book-keeping, arranging tomorrow's work and playing game... At the beginning, I used to open my blog and tried to write. But my brain had been already too tired to think, so I just stared at the blank screen.....hehehe...

This year, I has started to work more professionally. It means I take time for vacation. The first vacation I took was on last August, during our big Moslem Holiday, Idul Fitri. I closed my business for a whole week. Most of my regular clients didn't mind, because they also went for vacation themselves....as I said, it was the biggest public holiday here at Indonesia. Of course, after the vacation I was very, very overwhelmed with the laundry volume I had to work on. Apparently, everyone went home bringing all the dirty clothes from their vacation and sent it to me....hahaha.... It had taken me two weeks of hard work before everything was back to the normal pace.

This month, I take another vacation. My laundry business is closed since Dec 25, 2014 till Jan 4, 2015. Originally, I closed the business only till Jan 1. But then I noticed that Jan 3 is also a public holiday. So, I gave my employees vacation till Jan 4. This time, many of my clients surprised....this is quite a long one for them. Well, it is....hehehe...

When I was still an employee, vacation on Christmas and New Year was a dream. Mostly, I only had a half day on Dec 24 and continued till Dec 25 for Christmas, and another half day on Dec 31, continued till Jan 1. So, it had been quite awkward because my family gathered together and I still went to work. So I promised myself, when I have my own business, I will make sure that I'm able to take vacation whenever I want. The first two years I dedicated all of my energy to build my business. I closed the business only on Sundays. This year, with the clients quite so many which I'm no longer able to handle myself, I start to build a professional work-system, as I have to also concern about my employees' welfare. So, I started to take vacation on public holidays.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Saturday, 18 May 2013, I still kept active till 5pm. I only worked till midday that day, then met my sister at her new apartment and drove her to the airport. Due to the unusual traffic-jammed, I arrived very late at home and decided not to go to the church that evening like I used to do every Saturday. But I can't go and rest immediately. I had promised to deliver laundry to a client at 8pm.

As clocks went by during the waiting time, the temperature of my body slightly arose. Ok, I thought, it must be too fatigue.....so, I took an analgesic pill. When I delivered her laundry, my client also commented that I looked not well enough. That's alright, I told her, I just need a good sleep during weekend...... I should know better...hehehe...

Sunday morning, I woke up still with a rather high fever. The usual analgesic pill I took didn't help too much and I didn't dare to take too many that kind of medicine. My head can't handle the hangover it causes.....hehehe... So, I just stayed home all day and rest, hoped that my temperature would go down. It did on the evening.

Two days fever had left me quite weak, so I decided not to go work on Monday. I just hoped that another day of resting would make me ready to face the world again on Tuesday. Alas, as the day went by, my temperature was back running high again. Made Mom worried and forced me to check my blood to the nearby laboratory on Tuesday morning. The result : my thrombocyte count was only 107,000 from normally above 150,000.....I was positively DHF!What is DHF? It's Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, usually is caused by a virus from a certain mosquito's' bites. What kind of mosquito? It's called Aedes aegypti. So, it is quite normal, I guess, if the doctor and my visitors asked where I was bitten by those mosquitoes....at home or at work? I think I got them more confused when I said that unlikely there were any mosquitoes at those places.....hehehe... It's true, nevertheless....hehehe....

Anyway, that DHF attack made me had to stay at the hospital for one week, and at some point made my doctor quite panic because my thrombocyte count decreased very rapidly till only 14,000. At that level, I could have nosebleeds or shock. I got neither...hehehe... Even that normal sign of DHF, the blood spots in the skin, appeared on my feet only after the thrombocyte count increased. My doctor said jokingly that maybe the extra fat in my body was the one that had helped me to keep strong.....and I agreed....hehehe...

When I was finally allowed to go home, I think I left something more than just my illness at the hospital. Till now, I still don't know what things had been lost. After three days rest at home, I struggled to get back on the road, back to the old routine....both work and my own business. I preferred it, rather than continuously thinking about the lost things....hehehe...

Very much thanks for my sister who had decided to go home and accompany me during my stay at the hospital. And I hope God bless my Mom who had driven me to and from hospital, and also taken care my laundry business while I was unavailable. I love you all....:)....and the Little One too, of course......:)

Friday, May 31, 2013

It's been so long since I posted any update of my life. The biggest reason is, I'm still trying hard to keep up with my growing laundry business.

Lately, the pick-up, delivery and preliminary proccess of laundry has keep me awake till midnight. Then, early in the morning I have to wake up to continue the second proccess - cleaning and drying. At the moment, there's only two days free of delivery - Wednesdays and Sundays. During those days (either on afternoons or all day of Sundays), I used to help in ironing for some special clients.

When a friend wants to hang out with me, I need to plan everything very carefully......I guess it had really made my friends very frustating with me......hehehehhee..... But, no, not only my friends. Even my nephew is sometimes very dissappointed.....hehehe....especially times like this, when school day is out and he's bored staying at home.

The biggest news at the moment is, that finally I found my courage and hand-in my resignation to the office. I gave two months notice to my boss to find my replacement. Shouldn't be that difficult, I'm not that unique......hehehehhe.....

Thursday, March 14, 2013

On Wednesday morning, March 13 while browsing my friends' status on Facebook, my eyes caught a comment in a friend's status. The person wished a Rest-in-Peace for my friend. What??? I opened the whole posting and read from up to bottom. It was said that my friend - Imelda Fridajanti - had an accident while rafting on the previous day and passed away on 4pm in the afternoon. It shocked me, because I still read her posting on Facebook two days before....

Imelda Fridajanti was an old friend from my junior high school. We shared the same class during the first two years. I didn't remember many of my classmates on the junior high school. Frida - that's what we used to call her - was one of the very few I remembered. We separated during the third year. Then I went to a different school for the senior years, while she continued at the same school.

We met again on 2009, 22 years after separated, thanks to Facebook. It was quite surprising that she still remembered me. After that, we kept in touch through Facebook. She liked to post interesting status, that invited her friends to give opinion and sometimes debated...hehehe...

During these last four years, I only met her once. She came to my office during one of her busy day. After that, many times she had invited me to come along in small reunions with other classmates. But I was never able to attend. Firstly, because it was always in a wrong time. Secondly - maybe the biggest reason - because I didn't remember any of other guests. It surely will make me very awkward and feel very out of place....hehehe...

Now, Frida is no longer here anymore. I will miss reading her postings on Facebook. One of her friend mentioned that we had lost a valuable friend, who always actively invited her old friends to reconnect. Farewell, my friend, hope we'll meet again in the next life.....